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If Obama Orders the CIA to Kill a US Citizen, Amazon Will Be a Partner in Assassinationby Norman Solomon, February 13, 2014Print This | Share ThisPresident Obama is now considering whether to order the Central Intelligence Agency to kill a U.S. citizen in Pakistan. That’s big news this week. But hidden in plain sight is the fact that Amazon would be an accessory to the assassination.

Amazon has a $600 million contract with the CIA to provide the agency with "cloud" computing services. After final confirmation of the deal several months ago, Amazon declared: "We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA."

The relationship means that Amazon – logoed with a smiley-face arrow from A to Z, selling products to millions of people every week – is responsible for keeping the CIA’s secrets and aggregating data to help the agency do its work. Including drone strikes.

Drone attacks in Pakistan are "an entirely CIA operation," New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti said Tuesday night in an interview on the PBS NewsHour. He added that "the Pakistani government will not allow the [U.S.] military to take over the mission because they want to still have the sort of veneer of secrecy that the CIA provides."

The sinister implications of Amazon’s new CIA role have received scant public attention so far.

As the largest Web retailer in the world, Amazon has built its business model on the secure accumulation and analysis of massive personal data. The firm’s Amazon Web Services division gained the CIA contract amid fervent hopes that the collaboration will open up vast new vistas for the further melding of surveillance and warfare.

Notably, Amazon did not submit the low bid for the $600 million contract. The firm won the deal after persuading the CIA of its superior technical capacities in digital realms.

Amazon is now integral to the U.S. government’s foreign policy of threatening and killing.

Any presidential decision to take the life of an American citizen is a subset of a much larger grave problem. Whatever the nationality of those who hear the menacing buzz of a drone overhead, the hijacking of skies to threaten and kill those below is unconscionable. And, as presently implemented, unconstitutional.

On Feb. 11 the Times reported that the Obama administration "is debating whether to authorize a lethal strike against an American citizen living in Pakistan who some believe is actively plotting terrorist attacks." In effect, at issue is whether the president should order a summary execution – an assassination – on his say-so.

The American way isn’t supposed to be that way. The "due process of law" required by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution is not supposed to be whatever the president decides to do.

A free and independent press is crucial for confronting such dire trends. But structural factors of corporate power continue to undermine the potential of journalism. The Washington Post is a grim case in point.

Six months ago, Jeff Bezos – the CEO and main stakeholder of Amazon – bought the Post. But the newspaper’s ongoing CIA-related coverage does not inform readers that the CIA’s big contract with Amazon is adding to the personal wealth of the Post’s sole owner.

This refusal to make such conflict-of-interest disclosures is much more than journalistic evasion for the sake of appearances. It’s a marker for more consolidation of corporate mega-media power with government power. The leverage from such convergence is becoming ever-less acknowledged or conspicuous as it becomes ever-more routine and dominant.

After e-mail correspondence with me about the non-disclosure issue in early January, the executive editor of the Washington Post, Martin Baron, declined to answer questions from media outlets on the subject. On Jan. 15 – when I delivered a RootsAction.org petition under the heading "Washington Post: Readers Deserve Full Disclosure in Coverage of CIA," signed by 30,000 people, to the newspaper’s headquarters – Baron declined to meet with me or designate any employee to receive the petition. Clearly the Post management wants this issue to go away.

But, as I wrote to Baron last month, it’s all too convenient – and implausible – for the Washington Post to claim that there would be "no direct relevance of the [Amazon-CIA] cloud services contract to coverage of such matters as CIA involvement in rendition of prisoners to regimes for torture; or in targeting for drone strikes; or in data aggregation for counterinsurgency."

The surveillance state and the warfare state continue to converge. The Washington Post does not want us to insist on journalistic disclosure. Amazon does not want us to insist on moral accountability. President Obama does not want us to insist on basic constitutionality. It would be a shame to oblige any of them.

...i m not liking this news at all..n yes Felicity, it all makes perfect sense after reading this...i fear for my family n my country...things have been getting way outa control lately...when the constitution is no longer viewed as the law of the land n we can just eliminate amendments willy nilly it truly is frightening...its no wonder Amazon was not doing anything to delete untruthful n slanderous comments against an author we were discussing here a few months back...its all very frightening that the over reaching seems to grow by leaps n bounds daily...i hadnt seen nor heard of any of this which tells me the Main Street media either isnt doing their job or they r b hampered n harassed if they try too...thank u for sharing...

I know, I run into things that just seem crazy. I mean there are simply things that 'are' truths. Like my opinion of a book is my truth and 'should' just be validated as that - not an opening for some trolls to bash and defame - what the heck. The reasoning of why they have been allowed and even encouraged by Amazon seems fairly clear now - though, to me, scary weird.

I think there is always stuff going on in the world that we would rather not know about. Sometimes, it is good to know, because then there is some explanation to that question - 'why' - which I can never seem to stop asking. you know? When there is a reason for things - they don't seem so crazy making.

I really did think that these trolls 'just' represented the FMSF and their garbage - this seems much more sensible - I was not surprised to read it.